Spiritual Practices That Actually Work

Spiritual practices work, and this is not a matter of opinion. Scientists have been measuring their effects for more than thirty years, and there are now thousands of papers in peer-reviewed journals showing that people with a regular spiritual or religious practice tend to be healthier, happier and longer-lived than those without one, whatever they happen to believe. In this talk I look at the practices themselves rather than the arguments around them: gratitude, meditation and prayer, mantras, ritual, holy days and festivals, sport, and pilgrimage. Most of them cost nothing and require no prior belief system.

The thread running through all of them is connection. Meditation and prayer are complementary rather than rival, more like breathing in and breathing out. Rituals and festivals connect people to each other and to those who did the same things before them. Even sport, which is usually thought of as a supremely secular activity, brings people into the present more quickly than almost anything else.

This talk was recorded live at Hollyhock on Cortes Island in British Columbia, 2026.